vCloud Director Tenant UI: Dude…Where is my VM Web Console?

As most of you should know buy now, vCloud Director 9.0 features a new HTML5 Tenant UI Portal which is not only very pretty, but also functional. As of the 9.0 release the HTML5 Tenant UI has a limited scope of functionality compared to the legacy Flex based web console but is still a great example of where vCD is going in terms of continuing to enhance vCD.

I was having a discussion on Slack with Mark Ukotic talking about future vCD releases when he commented that he was looking forward to the Web Console coming to the HTML5 UI. To which I said “It was already there!” He replied saying “Really?” to which I replied…

On the Virtual Machines page, you can click on the VMware graphic which will open a Web Console window.

You won’t see the mouse change to indicate that the area is hot, which is why most people assume that the option to launch the Web Console isn’t there. But if you click on it, the Web Console window will pop up and you will be able to interact with the VM.

It is a very limited console in terms of remote actions you can perform. There is a lot more functionality in the VMware Remote Console…hopefully we will see that available to launch through the new Tennant UI in upcoming versions.

If the VM if powered off you will get the following message if you try to click on the image.

So there you have it! The Web Console is there in the new HTML5 Tenant UI in vCloud Director 9.0…it’s not super obvious, but it is there!